Google Assistant is pretty great, as far as virtual assistants go. You can ask it questions, play games with it, and order stuff from Google Express. But it also has a few problems, like it can't set reminders on the Google Home and it doesn't know where Arizona is. Yes, you read that last part correctly.

For at least the past week, Google Homes in Arizona have been incorrectly reporting the local time. When asked for the current time, affected Homes will respond with the current time on the East Coast. Asking for other location-based answers, like nearby restaurants or the weather, work as intended. To make matters more confusing (and hilarious), Arizona seems to be the only state affected. For some users, Google web search is also reporting the wrong time.

According to the forum thread in the source link below, Google is aware of the problem and is still working on a fix. Let us know in the comments below if your Google Assistant is having trouble with geography.

it depends on how you ask. i'm in AZ. if i ask for the time it's off by 3 hours. if i ask for the time in phoenix or in AZ it's correct.

David Hyman

My problem is that my GH seems to stop playing music for a bit and then starts playing again for half a song and then cuts out again. I have found the only way to fix it is to unplug and plug it back in. BTW why can't I just tell Google Home to just restart or reset itself?

Eh, she's not that bad. At least she knows Arizona is a US state. Until Breaking Bad, it was about 50/50 if people in the US thought New Mexico is part of Mexico or the US.

In HS, I worked retail at a certain blue and yellow retailer. One Christmas there was, as was not unusual at the time, mail in rebates on PCs and PC packages (this is eMachines time). In late January, we started getting a steady stream of people coming in with rebate denial postcards.

The reason for the denial? "Offer valid only for residents of the United States of America"

Guess where that rebate center was located? Arizona. They share their largest border with NM, and these were PEOPLE who processed these rebates, not a computer.

So it's probably just that Arizona forgot where it is located, not that Google Assistant forgot.

Régis Knechtel

C'mon, don't you have a little sense of humor?
It's just a joke :P

Stephen B Morris

LOL!!! Gotta love a good Walmart story.

abqnm

No, the other blue and yellow retail chain.

Rob

IKEA?

abqnm

Yes. The computers came in bags and came with a free soldering iron and instructions to build them from the components-up.

The hardest part was drawing the vacuum in the CRT.

Rob

Nice story. But when did IKEA sell computers? I suppose they don't do it nowadays, at least I haven't seen it

abqnm

No, they stopped several years ago. Now they sell tablets that you have to assemble in the store because you need more than just a soldering iron and hand tools.

Rob

I suspect you started telling a true story, but along the way - in your last two comments - made what they call "a joke"..

abqnm

I was only replying with the appropriate level of sarcasm to the suggestion that I was talking about IKEA when I was talking about a store that sold computers.

But since it seems you may be unable to grasp sarcasm, no, IKEA never sold computers, and that's why the absurd reply got an even more absurd answer.

Rob

Damn what a douche you are. Damn. I ask you "IKEA?", you say yes, why wouldn't I believe you? Do you think your ranting about soldering iron and hand tools made it obvious that your entire answer was sarcasm, even the very distinct "yes"? No, I can tell you, it wasn't obvious at all.

If you're going to use sarcasm in writing, then grasp how it works and make it obvious. You can't assume everyone will interpret your writing the same way as you do, human brains don't work like that.

You're talking with someone from the very country where IKEA was founded. I don't know what other blue and yellow stores you have in the US.

abqnm

I'm sorry to have offended you. I did not know where you are from, but the fact that you are from the country where IKEA was founded, I would hope, would provide you with enough information to know that IKEA never sold computers. But I digress.

I took your reply as sarcasm, and my reply of building your own computers from components and drawing your own vacuum in a CRT (which you couldn't possibly do at home), I believed, was absurd enough to not require a disclaimer that it was sarcasm. My apologies for not making that clearer and for misinterpreting your "IKEA?" comment as sarcasm.

And since it's such a hot topic now, suddenly, the store I was referring to is Best Buy. They are the largest electronics retail store chain in the US, and their colors are blue and yellow.

Can we be friends now? :)

Cael

Upvote for Power gif

Shane

It probably has something to do with most of Arizona not recognizing Daylight Savings Time, while some the Native American Tribes within it do, so It's probably getting confused somewhere along the line.

Nate Harris

^This. Beat me to it.

JG

If this is the case...
1.) Why is it only affecting quries made in state? Presumably Google would be as confused by someone in another state checking the time in Arizona....

2.) The time switch happened 4 months ago (March 12)... If the lack of time change was in play, shouldn't it have started 4 months ago?

3.) Likewise, Arizona has been abstaining from daylights savings switches since 1968. I would imagine in the last 50 years, someone has figured out how to get a computer to tell the proper time in Arizona...

Shane

I don't have the need nor the qualifications to debug for Google, just mentioning what seems likely to have something to do with time weirdness concerning Arizona.

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It's Saving not Savings time. It's singular as only one thing is saved. This is a common mistake. Arizona isn't the only place in the US that doesn't observer DST.

IronPlumber

It's observe, not observer.

I also learned from the Teen Titans that it's Savings, with an S.

4Ui812

I keep forgetting that 2 states don't recognize DST (HAWAII being the other) but there are 5 US territories that don't recognize DST as well. So, for a US company (Google) to fail taking that into consideration (your excuse) is bullshit. Although Google's yes men as of late may find your excusal to be fitting.

Brendan

Was considering buying a Google Home for my oceanfront property. Guess I'll wait.

Suicide_Note

I'm guessing you are a part of the Google Home team? lol

Matthew Bohr

It even does this on Google Search, it's not even limited to Assistant.

Joel Shafron

I'm sure it has to do with Arizona being in Mountain Standard Time year round. I also have issues with the time on appointments on my phone when the rest of the country switches back to Standard Time.

Bombaglad

hahahaha americans and their stupid unit system, thinking they're better than anyone else, now you see what nonsense comes out if everyone doesn't agree on one universal standard

skillfulshoe

Are you saying only the United States uses time zones? Or daylight savings time? Because neither of those things are true.

Bombaglad

nope, i don't have anything against time zones, they make sense and are applied everywhere. what i'm saying is, that if you use daylight savings time (which is nonsense IMO but that is unrelated to this), you shlould either use it nation-wide or not at all. just agree on one standard (not one time zone, just a general exceptionless rule on daylight savings time) and apply it everywhere, or you'll end up with mess like this

skillfulshoe

We don't need to change the way an entire country or state operates, just fix the code that caused this issue in the software.

It shouldn't be too hard to do and I'm sure Google will fix it soon.

Bombaglad

"change the way a state operates"?? just move the god damn clock just like everyone else, it's not that hard.. but why make somehing logical when you can make a 1000 workarounds like this one? because having a different time then everyone else around you based on which half of the year it is, is sooooooo convenient

Joel Shafron

It is already 110F degrees at 5pm, if we institute DST then it would be that 110F at 6pm. No thanks.

Bombaglad

no idea how hot or cold 110F is but yeah, that is one hell of a valid argument ;) /s

NavyVeteran

110F is bloody hot. I live in Arizona. We've gotten to 122 in the past. June 1990.

It's about sunrise, sunset, and power usage. I agree that it would be nice for everyone to be on the same standard... but it is also certainly understandable why some areas aren't on the standard.

Bombaglad

but if there is a reason why one area uses it (or not), then the reason is analogous for all areas within the time zone

needa

Not necessarily. Geography and weather varies greatly. You gotta think about how far north to south the states cover. Tilt of the earth etc. Arizona is easy. Where I get mixed up is there are some states that change back and forth to DST on different days/months than the rest of us. It's all about keeping power consumption down.

Bombaglad

THAT is a thing too?? oh god that's f***ed up, you just proved my point... as if it mattered what time on your clock it is when you do stuff you'd do anyway

skillfulshoe

You're right. Make the state of Arizona change the way they've been for a half century just so programmers don't have to type a few extra lines of code.

There are many legit reasons why Arizona doesn't observe DST and it honestly isn't a big deal. Mistakes happen in writing code and they can be fixed, which is what this article is about, a bug in the code.

Bombaglad

it's not about programmers, it's about how one damn country can't agree on one simple standard...

Merrill Sampson

The problem is, most people (even in the US) misunderstand the way the US works. The US is a federated union of independent states. The federal government only exist to regulate interstate commerce and provide for the common defense of the states and is specificity restricted to those functions by the Constitution. While it is common knowledge that the federal government has been overstepping these restrictions on the regulate for a long time, they generally don't bother violating states rights when there's nothing significant to gain from it, so things like Daylight Saving Time usually get left to the discretion of the states, where the decision legally should be.

Bombaglad

i get that.. but if some 30 states in europe managed to synchronize (even states outside of the eu, who have absolutely no obligation to follow any regulation) their DST, i don't see how a union as strongly connected as the US would have a problem to arrange that

Ben Bethel

Fun fact, time zones initially started with railroad schedules in 1883.... because noon was 'high noon' out here in the west... imagine 'if a train leaving at high noon leaves tombstone, and arrives at high noon in phoenix the next day, how long did that train take?' talk about hard math!

Suicide_Note

Time Zones are used around the world, but not every country or state is obligated to use it.

Bombaglad

i'm talking about daylight savings time, not about time zones, those are completely fine: either use it or not, just agree on one standard, but don't change it from state to state, or it'll be a mess

I noticed this yesterday! I just thought it was cause I didn't say Arizona, but then I remembered I shouldn't have needed to. Well I'm just glad I'm not the only one, but it is odd that it's only an AZ problem, lol.

I am pretty sure I am the one who first reported it a week ago during a long tech support session during which I seemed to be doing the troubleshooting for the low level support guy. He kept putting me on hold as I explained to him it's not just one Google Home. It extends across the Assistant and even Chrome.

It went up the tech support chain as they started to realize it was a big problem. I started doing all sorts of tests and reporting the results. We determined that, most importantly, it does not affect alarms. I have since exchanged emails with the last tech support guy. My last one was yesterday. Now I'm just getting the generic, "our developers are now working on kit."

As of this moment, the problem persists.

A side effect if this is that I learned for the second time that Google can be completely unaware of significant problems.

jose984

Negative, I reported this very issue middle of June around the 15th or so and they told me I was the first to report it. Anyways, I have been calling Google constantly almost on a daily basis because they initially told me this woud take about a week to fix that was about month ago! It appears that people have only just started noticing this within the last 2 weeks and its affecting ALL Devices running Google Assistant.

4Ui812

"Google still working on a fix"

That's just Google being Google.
Google has lost its way.

Corbin Baxter

😛😛😛

ethd

Well, there go my prospects of a beautiful beach house in Arizona with an ocean view.

Scr-U-gle

oh my, awful failure, Scrugle Assistant is such a terrible mistake.

Another Scrugle cock up, they have to be the most failure prone company on the planet, now Assistant-Gate.

Well, since most US citizens think Paris is the capital of Europe this should not be an issue either.

bekifft

Google should use their lobbying power to get rid of DST. Would make programming these things simpler.

TriguyRN

My chromebook was reporting the wrong time a week ago and I had no idea why. This explains things.

JG

Could it be a routing issue? Queries generated within Arizona are being routed to the wrong data center, for whatever reason, and thus the wrong GMT/UTC off-set calculations are being performed. While all non-Arizona traffic is being routed to the correct location and thus anyone outside of Arizona gets the actual time there.

It wouldn't be the first time there has been a hiccup in the DNS routing tables. And considering something like that could happen at any time, would explain why the issue is happening now, rather than in proximity to the time change.

Though would it be likely that just Arizona is affected?

Andrexx

Apparently Google also occasionally (lately) thinks Colorado is in Arizona, as my "local" weather will come up as if I'm there.